False-Positive Mammograms Increase Breast Cancer Risk

Females having false-positive mammograms may contract breast cancer ten years down the line.

A study has proved that females having false-positive mammograms may contract breast cancer ten years down the line. Thus, care is mandatory.

False-positive mammograms in females screened for tumors in their breasts may prove deadly later on. Even a decade later these women may have malignant carcinomas in their mammary glands. The results of the study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. It is a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In the US, at least 67% of the females who are 40 years of age or older tend to go in for regular checkups. Mammography is carried out and every one to two years or so, this standard procedure is followed to screen against chances of breast cancer.

For every ten mammograms, the chances of cancer showing up is 61% for those who get tested every year and 42% for those who get tested every two years. Those who test positive are recommended to undergo further imaging.

A biopsy is also in the cards for some of these women. The study lasted from 1994 to 2009. It involved 1.3 million women and consisted of 2.2 million mammograms. The age groups lay between 40 and 74 years of age. These females were observed over a period of ten years.

Those who had false-positive results were 39% more likely to contract breast cancer later on. Or so the study showed in its clear results. This was quite a contrast with those women who had a true-negative result.

Those who were referred for a biopsy had their chances of contracting cancer shoot up to a whopping 76%. Thus the suspicions of the radiologists proved to be true in the end. Any markers of future cancer that were predicted turned out in their full-fledged form in the final analysis.

The anomalous results, although they were non-cancerous in their implications, were harbingers of future cancer risk. For most women who tested false-positive, it was more or less a matter of how long they could cheat death.

Yet it was not a sign that one ought to get all worried about these results. A positive attitude and a healthy lifestyle went a long way in ensuring that a sizable percentage of these women didn’t get cancer in the end.

The risk is indeed there but it is not to the extent where it should be taken so seriously as to make living one’s life a hellish experience. Worry, fear and anxiety destroy life so they have to be avoided at all costs. Females ought to take things normally as they come and remember that it is not the moments in life but the life in each moment that counts.